Starscream's tomb
by Lanny-Sama
Summary: When Megatron took Starscream to the mine for his execution, he had expected a hunt, a fight, and a struggle 'till the last moment. In the end, all he had to do was walk away, and wait for the ceiling to come down. Meanwhile, two Archeolobots in the distant future make an interesting discovery... (Set during and after Rock Bottom)


Starscream's legs buckled, and his joints groaned with strain. His servos were denting under the pressure of several tons of earth and rock, and Starscream was still staring at the opening the Autobots had left through. Autobots- the self-appointed 'good guys'. Oh no, they didn't shoot their prisoners, they didn't sacrifice their soldiers- but leaving an enemy standing under a slowly descending wall of death?! Not a problem apparently! As long as they couldn't hear the victim's spark guttering out all was fine!

Pure desperation was all that was holding the cave ceiling up, and it was proving to not be enough. The crushing rock was inching lower and lower no matter how hard he strained to push it upward. A strained sound worked its way out of Starscream's vocaliser.

It was really too bad that rock ceilings couldn't understand flattery, or bribery. His silver tongue wasn't going to be doing him any favors now. Starscream barked out a crazed laugh as the ceiling sank even lower. He was going to die- he was going to get crushed like a filthy earth-squishy, all because he had to try and win Megatron's favor. Thick lot of good favor does in death!  
>Starscream's wings were trembling, completely rigid and pulling at his inner cabling with their strained position. He wasn't going to hold out much longer-!<p>

A shadow moved, and Starscream's optics were fixed on the small opening just a few strides away. Megatron stood there in silence. Starscream's spark made a little jump in its chamber.  
>"Master! You're alive-! Thank the allspark!" The lord of the Decepticons did nothing, and the hopeful expression slowly dropped off Starscream's face. No. The game was not lost yet! Rocks could not be swayed by pleading or groveling, gravity even less, but Megatron-...! "I did not abandon you Master! I returned to save you!"<p>

Megatron's optics narrowed, and he echoed the seeker cynically. "Save me?"

Starscream gasped with effort. "Look into my spark- My intentions were true! Please- have mercy!" The seeker's optics were wild and panicked, and Megatron glanced at the tons of rock weighing down on his second in command. Starscream waited, hope and dread warring in his spark-...

A quick offlining would have been more merciful than what Megatron did. The warlord stood for a moment longer, turned, and walked away.

The soon-to-be-dead Commander Starscream was living his name as Megatron exited the cave, his screechy voice promising undying loyalty, favors, pleasures, submission- anything! Megatron allowed himself a grim smile as he stepped out into the fading sunlight of the Earth's surface. Starscream was howling, begging for anything but the live burial Megatron had sentenced him to, finally resorting to meaningless threats.

Megatron lingered by the exit of the cave and listened, Starscream's promises and pleas still audible from far down below. Megatron's lips twitched in what could have been a smile or a grimace. He had punished Starscream before, but not beating had ever given him screams that desperate.

If he had waited a few breems longer before transforming and flying off to the Nemesis, he would have heard the seeker beg for death. Megatron left his former air commander to squirm in his own grave. 

* * *

><p><em>::Rollscreen, come in. I found something you'll definitely want to see! Take your equipment::<em> Rollscreen focus was torn from her datapad and she jumped off her chair. Finally- ages of deciphering old war logs was leading to something good! The archeolobot ran to the digging pit, where her partner was half-submerged in his tool-bag.

"What is it?! What is it?!"  
>Brushbarb was digging into their spelunking equipment like a madman, and he stumbled over his words as he explained. "The logs were right, the collapsed mine was here, the scanner indicated a small sealed off portion that didn't collapse, and the scans show a vague outline of a Cybertonian frame lying inside of it!"<p>

Rollscreen's optics widened, and she yanked her digging equipment out from its hiding spot. Several little tools skittered to the ground in her haste. "Primus, a Cybertronian frame?! We got no time to lose! Hurry up Brush!" Rollscreen couldn't hold back the revs of her engine. This right here, was every Archeolobot's dream!

The war between the Autobots and Decepticons had been horribly documented. Really- you couldn't blame warring bots for not writing anything down during their near-extinction by civil war, but the few measly datapads that were still legible were mostly pre-war and incomplete... This- ... This could discovery could bring a whole new perspective to the war! If the frame's memorybanks were still intact, Rollscreen and Brushbarb could have their names printed in bold red letters on one of the most accurate historic war records!

The two archeolobots carefully descended their rickety ladder into their digging spot and Brushbarb held out his scanner, his glossa peeking out between his lips in concentration.

"No sign of hazardous gasses, no danger of further collapse- I know all that, now where was-... Oh! There! That slab of rock, the frame's under there!" The two archeolobots bickered over drill parts and tools for only a few breems, and then they started to pick away at the stone that was keeping them from their treasure. Air that had gone untouched for eons rose up from the hole as they broke through the layer of stone, and the stink of congealed fluids was warped with age.

Rollscreen was the first to look inside when their careful drilling had finally made the hole big enough. Her optics immediately locked onto the battered corpse wedged in between the rocks.  
>"Oh wow."<p>

It was a seeker. The single visible wings was unmistakable, and the slender build was light and sleek. It would have been a work of art, had it not been pressed snugly inside of a narrow crevice. Rollscreen's intakes caught as she took in the Cybertonian's sheer size. The Cybertronian race really had shrunken over the eons, this mech would have towered over her in his living days by at least two heads. The seeker was a dull grey, save for a red streak of paint on his chevron and a few blue accents over the rest of his frame. His pedes were crushed- disappearing under a wall of solid rock.  
>Rollscreen was in awe, and she didn't look away while she spoke to Brushbarb. "It's a seeker! Must've gotten trapped in here when the mine collapsed. Oh Primus this is exhilarating! Did you bring the ropes?"<p>

"You bet!" Brushbarb lowered a rope into the crevice, and secured it to a sturdy boulder. He took a hesitating look down into the crevice and a quick shudder rattled his shoulderplating. "Smells rank down there... Uh, Rollscreen?...Is there any chance of him.. yanno... onlining?"

Rollscreen rolled her optics shook her head, pointing her flashlight over the dark-blue markings littering the little alcove. "You and your love for human-films... See that? Stagnant energon- enough to fill a whole tank, that's also what you're smelling." She shone her light through the cave, and the remnants of the energon gleamed dully.

Brushbarb wasn't convinced. "Offline humans that reactivate don't need their fluid to come back..." Rollscreen ignored him and traced her flashlight further over the scene below them. The congealed energon was everywhere, mostly pooling on the seeker's frame and staining the wall where the trapped seeker had filed his claws down to dull stubs in an attempt to free himself. Every piece of rock the seeker had been able to reach was damaged and stained with energon.

Brushbard shuddered again. "I've always been afraid of being buried alive..." Rollscreen carefully secured herself to the rope that would lead her down and tested it with a few firm yanks.

"I think everyone has feared that at one point in their lives." Brushbarb held the rope as Rollscreen lowered herself into the hole they had drilled, making a video-recording as she went. "First contact with this air since the Decepticon Autobot war..." She whispered under her breath. There was a good chance those words would be making it into a documentary, and she wished for a klik that she'd come up with something better in advance.

Rollscreen's pedes hit the ground, and she carefully stepped closer to the corpse. It was strange to see such an ancient mech still so preserved. The collapse must have sealed him in perfectly! She shuddered- it was well know even today that all fliers went insane if their primal coding was triggered inside of a cave or in confinement. This seeker's death had been a prelude of the Pit and it showed on his faceplate.

Most corpses rusted with time, becoming only a vague remnant of who they had once been, but the seeker had not a spot of rust on him, and his despairing expression was perfectly preserved even through the number of self-inflicted gashes. The seeker's optics were crazed and wide-open, and his mouth gaped in an agonised scream, foamed-up lubricant remnants sticking to the corners of his mouth.

Brushbarb came down a moment after Rollscreen, looking nervously around the seeker's little tomb. "Scrap- it looks even worse up close..." Brushbarb kneeled and ran a hesitant servo over the gashes in the stone. "...even tried to dig his way out..."

"Not only that." Rollscreen pointed to the back of the seeker's helm. It was crudely bashed in as if someone had been trying to break his head open, and the stone behind the seeker's helm was cracked.

"Oh Primus- look at this-" Brushbard pointing his flashlight at the mech's back where a mess of melted metal that had glued the seeker's corpse to the rocks around him. "He must've activated his thrusters to try and fly out... welded himself to the rocks."

Rollscreen walked closer to the dead seeker. It was a truly pitiful sight. His imposing wings had been too large to properly fit inside the crevice. One of them wasn't visible as the seeker was lying on his side, but Rollscreen had a pretty good idea of what the appendage looked like. It probably resembled a crumpled metal pancake more than an actual wing.

"...I think he tried to preen himself to calm down." Brushbarb shone his flashlight on the seeker's single visible wing and showed off the self-inflicted claw marks that had nearly severed the wing from his back. "I hoped it worked for him. That he calmed down." Brushbarb ran a servo over the abused wing in sympathy.

Rollscreen stepped past her partner and kneeled by the seeker's helm. She put her flashlight in between her denta and set her fingers to the task of freeing mech's helm from the rocks. "Brushbarb, come help me out here! There will be more than enough time to get lost in fantasy land later, after we've published our 100% accurate historic datapad file!"

Brushbarb grumbled. "Fantasy land-... Like you're one to talk." but he quickly joined her. The seeker's head was lying in a pile of rocks, much like the rest of his body, and as carefully as possible they chipped away at the stone at the back of his helm. Judging by the state of the frame, their chances of finding an intact set of memory banks was high- very high.

Their equipment chipped through the rock quickly, and the last few bits of immovable rock were meticulously chafed off by Rollscreen until they had perfect access to the mech's maintenance cover. It was unwilling to cooperate, built to resist any type of intrusion or force and about a million years old to boot, but a bit of persuasive wiggling and impatient cursing later, the helm clicked open.  
>Rollscreen froze, and reset her optics. Everything was still intact- pristine even. The heavy helm-plating had protected the processor and memorybanks without trouble, and there wasn't even that much dust inside of the mech's head. Rollscreen's spark gave a lurch, and her intakes became shallow.<p>

There was an undeniable charge running through the mech's systems. All systems were offline, the few visible energonlines were clogged or empty- but there was a subtle secondary energy still running through the mech's systems. Rollscreen's air vents choked on her intakes, and she tried to shake her head clear. This couldn't be right, the mech had no energon left in his frame- the damage-...

Brushbarb was pulling her aside by her shoulder. "Rollscreen, move a bit will you? I want to see-" His sentece broke off the very second he saw a small ripple of spark energy coarsing through the mec's lines, and he jolted back. "Dear Primus! Rollscreen h-he has a spark! I thought you said-!"

Rollscreen stepped back and kept her flashlight trained on the opened helm of the seeker. "I know what I said! I... It's impossible! This mech can't be online, he-... look at the energon lines-! Either clogged or empty, processor is definitely offline- his spark should have guttered out ages ago-!"

"...-but it didn't..." Brushbarb gave her a haunted look, and his plating rattled with a curt shiver.  
>The two archeolobots stood silently besides their find, and Brushbarb inching further backwards with his optics still on the seeker. "What do we do?..."<p>

Rollscreen stared at the damaged mech and the preserved memorybanks still kept safely within the helm. She pressed her lips together and stepped back to their rope, her hand already on her comm device.

"Simple. We call a medic."

**A/N: The episode Rock bottom was what hooked me on Transformers. I am forever grateful for the person who pointed me in its direction. You know who you are. Read and review if you enjoyed- there might be more, it is still undecided.**


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